17 June 2009

Systematic Misrepresentation of the Science of Disasters and Climate Change

Let me start this post by stating that I am a strong supporter of action on both adaptation and mitigation policies related to human-caused climate change. At the same time I have seen some disturbing things take place in the scientific community. And it is just my luck that the area where I have observed the most shenanigans is the area in which I have considerable expertise -- disasters and climate change.

This post summarizes and reviews the systematic misrepresentation of the science of disasters and climate change in major science assessments, partly for my own purposes, but also to explain that there is a pattern of behavior taking place in this community that should be of concern to anyone who cares about the integrity of science, regardless of their position on climate policies and politics.

2. Reliance on and featuring non-peer reviewed work conducted by the authors of the assessment reports.

3. Repeated reliance on a small number of secondary of tertiary sources, repeatedly cited such that intellectual provenance is lost.

The questions that I have are, does anyone in the mainstream scientific or media communities actually care? Or is climate change politics so important that we cannot simultaneously worry about standards of scientific integrity?

1. In 2001 the IPCC Third Assessment Working Group II report cautiously claimed in its Chapter 8 that the upward trend in the costs of disasters had a climate component, and supported this assertion by referencing a non-peer reviewed report by Munich Re published in 2000 surveying natural disasters in 1999. That Munich Re report compared disasters in the 1970s to the 1990s and only speculated on issues of attribution. I provided a critique in the following paper, based on a talk I gave at the Smithsonian in 2006 sponsored by the National Research Council.

The caution in the report did not stop the head of the IPCC John Houghton from making statements about the attribution of increasing disaster losses to human-caused climate change when testifying before the US Congress, or his successor Rajendra Pachauri from making similar statements in 2005 (both referenced in the paper linked above).

Coincidentally, a lead author of the IPCC Chapter 8 that featured Munich Re's non-peer reviewed work included Gerhard Berz, who worked for Munich Re.

2. In 2005 Science published a commentary by Evan Mills, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, asserting that,

According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment, climate change has played a role in the rising costs of natural disasters.

And Mills attributed at least part of the increase to "anthropogenic climate change."

What source did Mills use to support this claim? Why the IPCC Third Assessment Report Chapter 8 discussed above, which traces its sourcing to Munich Re, 2000. Mills also cites the Munich Re 2000 reported cited by the IPCC, giving the impression that there are multiple sources of support for his claim (even worse he cites a third report that also relies on Munich Re, 2000). Mills commentary is a fact checker's nightmare. Mills commentary is important because it shows up later and repeatedly as offering support for claims of attribution, even though it only offers a secondary and tertiary citation. Presumably the fact that it was in Science in 2005 gives it greater standing than a 2000 Munich Re report.

3. In 2006, the Stern Review report cherrypicked a single non-peer reviewed paper (Muir-Wood 2006) from a workshop I held and used it to generate an estimate of escalating damages due to greenhouse gas emissions. I examined the Stern Review report in depth and found that it also mysteriously inflated damages by an order of magnitude. I summarized the issues with the Stern Review in a peer reviewed paper:

This brief critique of a small part of the Stern Review finds that the report has dramatically misrepresented literature and understandings on the relationship of projected climate changes and future losses from extreme events in developed countries, and indeed globally.

Richard Tol found it surprising (PDF) that Stern ignored relevant peer reviewed work and engaged instead in a selective reading of the available literature. Despite being unchallenged, my critique is ignored.

Further, the IPCC included a graph attempting to show how closely temperature anomalies match up with disaster losses, using a scaling of the axes to suggest a relationship where none has been shown in the peer-reviewed literature. Again it relies on Muir-Wood (2005).

Coincidentally, Robert Muir-Wood, of Risk Management Solutions, Inc., was an author of the chapter of the IPCC report that selectively highlighted his own non-peer reviewed work.

5. The US Climate Change Science Program systematically and repeatedly misrepresented the science of disasters and climate change.

First, the CCSP US extremes report miscited several of my papers in support of claims that they did not make and relied on Mills 2005 as the definitive source on this topic. The disasters and climate change section of this CCSP report is also a fact checker's nightmare.

Second the CCSP draft Synthesis report and final Synthesis report relied on non-peer reviewed work by Evan Mills and ignored relevant peer reviewed research showing different results (in fact all peer reviewed research points in the same direction on this subject).

Coincidentally, Evan Mills was an author of the CCSP Synthesis Report that highlights his own non-peer reviewed work. Mills also apparently consults for companies with an interest in climate policies, and yet this was not dsclosed by the CCSP.

Summary

The information above documents a pattern of misrepresentation of the science of disasters and climate change in the Stern Review report, the reports of the IPCC, an the US CCSP. The pattern of misrepresentation has three common characteristics:

2. Reliance on and featuring non-peer reviewed work conducted by the authors of the assessment reports.

3. Repeated reliance on a small number of secondary of tertiary sources, repeatedly cited such that intellectual provenance is lost.

The evidence presented here, and in great detail via the links, is unambiguous and unequivocal in support of my claims. Though if you would like to refute them with evidence, please do so in the comments. Until the climate science community cleans up its act on this subject it will continue to give legitimate opportunities for opponents to action to criticize the climate science community.